What is your ideal home layout for a detached house? Everything on a single plane, or two or more floors? Garage built in or separate? Living room on the first or second floor? En suite bathroom or not? Open floor plan, closed or semi-open?
I have been thinking a bit about this lately and just wanted to see what others thought.
Single floor, semi-open - the kitchen should be separated from the living room and only partly opened in to the dining room (doorway or archway, not just a peninsula of cabinets.) En suite bathrooms for 2 bedrooms, jack-and-jill for 2 others, and a half-bath to keep company from having to traipse thru bedrooms. And the main bedroom should be isolated from the rest. (Our last house had the living room between our room and the other two - it was great! ) Attached, oversized 2-car garage. Laundry room near the bedrooms rather than spilling into the kitchen or a hallway or the garage. And skylights! Loves me some skylights!
Single story (stairs are a hazard for young and old alike), three bedrooms, two baths, open plan Great Room and Kitchen, 3 car garage (at least) attached to house, and an en suite Master bedroom and Bathroom. Master Bedroom on one side of the house and the two other bedrooms on the opposite side for more privacy.
One floor. Porch.
Large bathroom.
I once designed and built a house, and I have thought a kind of enormous amount about such things. There is no one ideal layout, because at different times of life one needs different things.
You have to ask yourself hundreds of questions and figure out how to compromise on the answers because you cannot have everything you want in the same house.
A good book to look at for the primary ideas of how to think about houses is A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander. Although it is not exactly practical, it will open your mind to see beyond things like floor plans to how to make a home with a soul.
The most important things in any house are a light-filled kitchen with a big table in it, and a cosy private place to sit that you love.
Indoor plumbing is also nice.
Now that stairs are hard for us, I would want one storey, garage attached. But for 47 years I lived very happily in a 2 storey + basement with an attached garage that I could get into from the kitchen. Above the garage a master BR with ensuite bath (shower only) had been added. Then there the three additional BRs and original bathroom. Downstairs there was an entry hall with a coat closet. Eventually, we had the coat closet turned into a tiny half bath (toilet and tiny sink) and added a standalone coat closet in the vestibule. That and some hooks in the entry hall were satisfactory. Then there was a full kitchen and a doorway to the dining room and the living room. The basement had the laundry room and my workbench. The house was only semidetached, but that caused no problem.
Excellent advice! I got my architecture degree in Berkeley under Alexander and his co-author Sara Ishikawa was my neighbor years later when I settled down to raise my family. I keep running into folks from all walks of life who have discovered and learned from A Pattern Language, it is a marvelous way of looking at the world that we build.
As I’m getting older, a single level with no basement appeals to me. In Chicago weather, an attached garage is quite nice.
We live in a split level/tri-level. (Garage level also has family room and 1/2 bath, 6-7 steps up to the living/dining/kitchen, then 6-7 more steps to the bedrooms/baths over the family room/garage.) A few years ago I shattered my ankle. Realized how nice it would be to have a bedroom, kitchen, and bath all on the same floor.
Another “issue” is the lack of doors between levels. If someone is in the family room watching TV, the sound really travels up to the bedroom level. Could be an issue with open floor plans.
With kids, it was nice to have a 2-story with finished basement. Kids could stay up late in the basement and not bother us upstairs.
When we “downsized” from that home, we had to decide how small of a house we wanted. We ended up buying a larger home than we really needed (tho not all that large), simply because we did not want to always be on top of each other, and to have to do everything in the same rooms. When/if we move from here it will be to either a small ranch or a 1-level condo/apt.
Because both my father and my brother’s father-in-law need wheelchairs now, I’m sensitive to the idea of adaptive design. So I would go for a single-story house with no steps anywhere, wide doorways and no barriers to entering the shower. I’d also like the house to be really well-insulated and energy-efficient.
Or if single-story isn’t practical depending on the building site, I’d design it so that there’s an obvious spot where an elevator could be added later (like closets in the same spot on both levels).
This. My house is full of staircases. I was anxious about that when i bought it, as I’ve had knee issues since i was 20. But it’s been great. It’s good for sound separation, and during the pandemic it forced me to get some tiny amount of exercise, just getting from my bedroom to the pantry in the basement and then to the kitchen in between. But staircases are obviously not right for everyone, and i expect there will come a time when they aren’t right for me.
I like having an ensuite bathroom. Especially if i need to get up in the night to pee. I live in a snowy climate, and i care a lot about having an attached garage.
I think the kitchen is the most important room in a house. I like a bright kitchen with a simple, functional layout, and enough room on the side for a table for family meals. I’m also old fashioned enough to like a separate dining room for bigger meals (by which i mean more people, not more food.) i wanted a house with a dining room that could seat everyone for Thanksgiving and the Seder, which means I’ve crowded 14 around the dining room table, although it’s fewer now. (One year we didn’t all fit, and we had to have a second table inn the kitchen.)
It’s also nice to have a place to den up,
Which could be your bedroom, or a “man cave”, or a cozy spot in the living room. Or your ensuite bathroom. 
But i feel that a comfortable home should foster both social interactions and privacy, as most of us need some of each of those.
I also feel that a comfortable home should be large enough that you can be away from others, and small enough that if you yell, your housemates will hear you.
I placed an order for A Pattern Language. Thanks for the recommendations.
We have two toddlers and have been thinking a while about what kind of house would be best for us. This is what we have so far.
2 floors. First floor is half-bath, laundry, and kitchen, dining and living-room in a half-open configuration. Maybe an L-shape. So that the living room is around the corner from the kitchen and dining. It’s important that the common areas are quite big, while the bedrooms and bathrooms don’t need to be that big.
Second floor is 3-4 bedrooms. 2 baths. One that opens to the hallway and one can be en suite, but only if you have to pass through a walk in closet. I don’t like having the bathroom so close to the bedroom.
Should also have a TV area on the second floor. Ideally also space for two desks to work from home. And a door maybe at the top of the stairs. We currently have the problem of sound travelling between stairs.
I think I would prefer a separate garage. It just feels cleaner not to have the car so close, but people might disagree here.
Having everything on one floor is also tempting, but you do have to add some more hallway space to make it work. And won’t things sometimes be a longer walk away than if you had stairs?
My 90-y/o mother just had a stair chair installed between her kitchen and basement. Not only can she ride it up or down the stairs, but it has a remote control so she can send dirty laundry downstairs to my sister (who lives down there) and sis can send baskets of clean clothes back upstairs.
I’m 70 and while I can get to the basement OK for now, I’m adding such a system to my future wish list, assuming we’re still living here in 15-20 years. There’s no practical place for a laundry room upstairs, and I refuse to put one in the garage. So the moving chair is an ideal solution. That, or a live-in laundry person…
We’ve lived in a few different homes. In Anchorage, which is a winter climate (duh), having the garage as part of the house was really nice. It was a townhouse, which meant three stories with a lot of stairs, and it was a pretty open floor plan, with a fireplace in the living room and a view of the mountains. The kitchen was too small, but a remodel fixed that.
The Oregon house was one floor living, but there was a finished basement that was used for storage, a furnace, and a chest freezer. It was awkward to get to, as one had to go down exterior stairs to gain entrance. There was a detached one (small) car garage, so the car was outdoors year-round, as the “garage” was my wood shop. Huge kitchen.
Now we’re in a retirement home. One level apartment that is ADA compliant. Tiny kitchen, which is a nuisance.
All three homes worked for us, so I can say that each was more or less ideal for the times in which we lived there.
I will write about what I want, not what I have (I wouldn’t qualify for a mortgage on a small apartment, let alone a house, my living space is currently a tiny 18 square metre rented studio). My ideal home would be a small English-style cottage, alternatively a well-built mid-20th-century North American bungalow, perhaps (but not necessarily) ranch-style.
I don’t have a family so I don’t need a large house. I would be perfectly happy with one that has three bedrooms: one for myself and the two others could be flexible use: one could be a home office, one could be a guest room, or it could be a potential partner’s / wife’s room if she wants to have a separate one. Good to have three bedrooms just in case.
While I don’t have a strict floor plan that I would like, I will mention the following points:
I would insist on a kitchen with a wall and ideally a door. I dislike open concept kitchens, I consider them to be a regressive lower standard.
I want a big back yard. For me, the “McMansions” that have grown up all over North America in recent years come damn close to defeating the purpose of owning a house as opposed to an apartment. The houses themselves may be big, but their gardens are miserable little pens. I want land in which I can plant lots of flowers, perhaps some vegetables, and bring nature close to me.
That’s it.
You might like the setup i have. Next to the bedroom is a room with two sinks and a large closet. Through that is a door to a room with a toilet and bath. It means one of us can poop while the other brushes their teeth without being in the same room. And the drugs in the medicine cabinet don’t get hot and damp when someone showers.
Thirty-odd years ago I would have said two stories, but stairs are becoming a problem now so I’ll settle for one. A good-sized pantry, plus a butler’s pantry between kitchen and dining room. En suite bathroom for the master bedroom, and four other bedrooms with jack-and-jill baths near the other end of the house. (Both bedrooms in each pair should be the same size.) Laundry room in with the bedrooms. Attached two-car garage. A good-sized library is a must, though I suppose this is a little extreme. If it’s far enough south that snow won’t be a problem, rooms arranged something like a Roman villa built around an atrium (with impluvium) and a peristyle.
A library.
And detach that garage!
Less risk of fire spreading to the house.
An A-frame, with a conventional garage-type-add-on for the library.
A shocking luxury–a small elevator to the loft bedroom.
Solar panels & battery storage, but on the garage,
The nicest home i ever visited was built in a ring around a Japanese garden. There was a larger garden “outdoors”, but every room if the house opened to a balcony overlooking the interior garden, which was lovely. That wouldn’t work in my climate – i want to be able to get to breakfast without putting on a warm coat. But it was really nice.
We designed and built our current house. The main floor has the master bedroom with included fancy shower, bidet toilet and laundry. All doors are 3’ wide. There is a guest suite up a half flight of stairs. The main living/dining area is 24’x36’ with fireplace, large kitchen island with cooktop, double wall oven, and a 10’ double sliding door to make the patio more living space in the summer. There’s a separate office. The attached garage is 31’x48’ with my motorcycles and tools in it, with a bathroom. The upstairs to the garage is rec room/yoga/TV. This works very very well for us.
Main living area on one level.
A basement. I’m sick and tired of crawling under the house to fix wiring, plumbing problems.
(Nowadays we have to pay someone else to do that, but we still need storage.)
2 main bedrooms with en suite bathrooms. At least one with a walk-in shower with grab bars, etc. Tall toilets. All that easy access stuff.
One of those bedrooms would be for guests.
Two more ‘bonus’ rooms for hobbies. (Wifes hobbies should be separated from husbands hobbies.)
A half bath for visitors/daytime use so nobody has to walk through bedrooms.
A large, (2 butt), well designed kitchen, with lots of counter space and a large pantry.
A large covered porch. Big enough for tables and chairs. Also a large patio area out back, also with seating. Probably with a pergola.
Attached garage, at least 2-car.
A modest, easy care yard, with room for outbuildings.
A paid off mortgage.
